Light & Darkness
by Azhirii
Summary: Now a full retelling of Life & Death the way I would rather have seen it. More actual vampirism and characters with a backbone. Currently T rated, will be M eventually I think, but not for a while.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note**

 **To be honest, I'm not entirely sure where to start this one off. I love _Life and Death_ , and I actually think I like it better than the original _Twilight_ and its constituent parts. There's just something about it that sparks my mind more than the original ever did. I think the biggest part is the swap to Edythe from Edward. Sometime after reading and rereading the original novels, I started disliking Edward as a character.**

 **It's not even any one thing, more a myriad of tiny issues I have with him that makes me just sort of not love him. He's too careful, he's too bland, he walks all over Bella, and she just sort of sits there and lets him. Now granted, Beau is pretty much the same as Bella, and Edythe is essentially Edward, but she was different enough that I didn't develop the same distaste for her. She's also female…**

 **I'm a guy, and I really, _really_ like fiction that puts a lead female character in a position of power. Now you can say the same thing about Victoria from the original books, sure, but to me she was just sort of following a path, with no real characterization, just another force to be dealt with.**

 **Edythe on the other hand we learn a lot about. She's a well-rounded character, but then again to me she shares some of Edward's more irritating flaws – she's overbearingly protective, and again too careful to me.**

 **Now my favorites in the vampire genre are the _Underworld_ movie series, the _Blade_ movie series, the novel _Thirst_ by Christopher Pike, and the TV show _The Vampire Diaries_ (of which my favorite character has to be Damon). **

**If you go look at all those titles, you're going to see a marked difference from the _Twilight_ universe. You're going to see far less focus on romance and much more blood and gore. No I'm not really a horror fan, but to me vampires are deadly. They're dangerous, hard to control, and kill _people_. Frequently.**

 **Meyer paints a very pretty picture of a family of vampire do-gooders, and while I love them all, and seriously enjoy the concept of an inherently good character derived out of a bad one (seriously, Damon Salvatore), what I think _Twilight,_ its sequels, and _Life and Death_ all lack, to me – and I'm sure it's because I'm that odd male _Twilight_ fan and I'm weird – is darkness.**

 **We all have it in us, and with vampires it's closer to the surface than in any human. Meyer does allude to it and bring it out for a breather every once in a while (the mirror room scene, the first meadow scene, etc.) but it's sort of overshadowed in favor of the overarching love story. I would much rather have a _Twilight_ universe where that predatory nature, that feral side, that darkness, is much closer to the surface of our favorite vampire. **

**I would have liked to see exactly how dark Edward or Edythe could go. One of the early lines of _Life and Death_ has Edythe telling Beau how she spent their first class together imagining hundreds of ways to kill him, and I wish there was more of that. Honestly the whole "mind over matter" thing to me is far less interesting than writing her having to constantly struggle with the part of her that imagines killing him every time she lays eyes on him.**

 **The scenes where she's bolting twenty feet across the room because of one little careless action are my favorites. They're my favorites because they show that darker nature for what it is instead of simply masking it over, but to me those scenes don't go far enough. I still don't want Beau ending up dead or Edythe having to live with killing him, don't get me misconstrued - although it'd make an interesting short fic.**

 **I wish we could have taken a look into the years Edythe spent rebelling, and I wish she was just slightly less put together under her human facade. Still the same person, still Meyer's Edythe Cullen, just… rougher, more fun, edgier, and less worrisome. I'd like to think she ignores her vampiric side so much, spends so much time suppressing it, that she doesn't really understand its intricacies as well as she thinks. So that's what I intend on doing here. I'm going to start with a drabble or two, just to get my head into it, and get back to actually writing things, and if I like what I create, and it's received well, I'll consider writing _Life and Death_ the way I imagined each scene in my head after reading it. **

**Unfortunately, because it's my _version_ , and not a completely separate story, plagiarism is likely to be a thing. I'll try not to copy things wholesale, but to preserve the feeling and the flow of the story, some parts must be very similar. If there's one thing I hate and can turn me off a particular fic faster than anything else, it's bad flow, making the fic feel completely devoid of its inspiration.**

 **Oh, and I'm making some minor changes that are more in-line with how I perceive vampires, as well as a couple other tiny indulgences because I can play god with this story all I want. To me, vampires have fangs, for example. I understand Meyer's view being "they're not needed" and I agree. But then she doesn't _need_ a lot of other things, so why not have a little fun and make her, at least in my mind, an actual apex predator. I'm not sure if she's still going to sparkle – I don't mind it so much but I think there's a lot of fun to be had with other more traditional things.**

 **EDIT: Based on getting a couple positive reviews and my own giddiness, I've decided to turn this into a full fic instead of just drabbles. I'm going to attempt to rewrite the whole story as I see fit. So, I'm backfilling the story up to my original first scene, and then continuing on. Some scenes from the original will be similar, many will not.**

Chapter 1

October 17, 2015

I flew down the road with my windows rolled down. I was going a little faster than I suppose was absolutely necessary, but this was the home stretch on my longest trip to date. Even with the overcast, the seventy-five degree air felt just right whistling around the Mustang's interior. My car had air conditioning, sure, but with where I was headed to for the foreseeable future, things weren't going to get much warmer than this, so I was enjoying it while it lasted.

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town names Forks exists under a perpetual overcast. It rains in this little town more than anywhere else in the entire country. It was from this little town that my mother escaped from with me in tow, only a few months old. It was in this town that I'd spent a month nearly every summer, and it was to this little town I was headed towards. My plan was to spend the next two years here, until my graduation.

"You don't have to do this," my mom had said to me –for the final time- just before I had left. She had made it sound as if I were exiling myself to live with my dad in Forks. Truth was, I didn't honestly mind it. Granted, I was doing this mainly for her benefit, but to me finishing high school was just yet another step down the road, and it didn't really matter where I did it.

I had loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the dry heat and the city lights at night, but mostly I'd loved living with my mom, where I felt I was needed. But I didn't really mind the idea of living with Charlie – my dad, either. He'd been living alone since my mom had left with me all those years ago, and he was honestly more like me than my mom had ever been – quiet, relatively independent, and simple.

"I _want_ to go," I had told her truthfully, though she didn't believe me. She never could stand Forks. It was one of the biggest contributing factors to us leaving back then. She needed the hustle and bustle of the big city to keep her feeling centered, I suppose. But was leaving my mom to fend for herself really the right thing to do? It seemed like it was during the months I'd struggled toward this decision. But I didn't feel so sure now. Of course, having Phil in and around her life meant that she'd have someone other than me to hold it together, which was an honest sigh of relief. After juggling her life, my work, and my school around in circles for almost three years now, I was happy to finally be taking a bit of a breather from it.

"Tell Charlie I said hi when you get there."

"I will."

"I'll see you soon," she promised. "You can always come back home if you change your mind."

I knew I wouldn't. I've always been like my dad in that regard – we both tend to make our choices and stand behind them, no matter the outcome.

"Don't worry about me," I insisted. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom."

She hugged me on the front porch steps for a minute, and then I had turned and walked to my car, pulled out of the driveway of her small house, and she was gone.

It's a _very_ long drive from Phoenix to Forks – roughly three days of driving, if you're not a nut and you pace yourself. Originally my mom had gone on and on about taking a nice, comfortable plane ride up to Seattle, but she'd eventually caved when I told her I'd be damned if I was going to leave my prized possession – the car I'd spent two years working after school to be able to afford, at her house while I was fifteen hundred miles away. The thought of my pride and joy just sitting there for two years was simply not acceptable.

She'd worried about me going this far on my own, as was her custom, but I _loved_ driving, unlike her. Of course the Mustang wasn't exactly a great economy car, which meant that this little venture had taken a fairly large chunk of my small savings since the car's purchase to get up here. This meant that finding some sort of work besides school in Forks was essential to keeping me as independent as I liked to be, but that could wait a few days.

Charlie had honestly been pretty decent about the whole affair. He seemed genuinely excited that I'd be spending more than just a week or two with him over the next two years, and he'd told me over the phone last night that he'd already got me registered in at the local high school. It would however be slightly awkward, at least at first. Neither of us were very extroverted, we'd both let my mother be enough of that for the both of us. But we both did enjoy the outdoors – one of his major reasons for keeping his roots so solidly in Forks. Back then my mom had just… needed me more.

As I rolled past the Forks limits, it started drizzling. I supposed it was inevitable at some point. At least I wouldn't have to _try_ to keep the car clean while I was here. I silently said my goodbyes to the sun and rolled up my windows.

Charlie's cruiser was sitting at the station, and as I drove past its headlights came on and it quickly pulled out in behind me. This didn't surprise me, as I'd texted him when I was about half an hour out.

Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. I'd never tell him, but in all honesty one of the biggest reasons I had put my foot down and dragged my own car all the way out here was because despite my growing lack of fundage, I simply was _not_ going to be _that guy_ getting dropped off at school every day in a police cruiser with red and blue lights on the roof. It was already irritating enough that I was coming into school here a month into the semester, when people already had their friends and their classes all figured out, but dealing with being chauffeured by a squad car every day would simply have gone too far.

As I pulled into Charlie's driveway, his cruiser came to a stop just beside my car, and I could see him lightly shaking his head from side to side through the driver's window as I stepped out of my car.

"I still can't believe you actually drove all the way up here yourself," he said, getting out himself.

I shrugged my shoulders at him. "It wasn't that bad, honestly. Just a lot of highway I usually see from thirty-thousand feet up."

"Yeah, bet your butt's pretty sore after three days of that," said Charlie, gesturing with one hand at my car in general.

I smiled at him, "a bit,' I conceded.

"It's good to see you, Beau," he said, smiling as he walked towards me. We patted each other's shoulders sort of awkwardly, and then stepped apart.

"How's Renée? **"**

"Mom's great - still crazy, but great."

"You really feel okay about leaving her?"

We both understood that this question wasn't really about my own personal happiness. It was about whether I was shirking my… responsibility to look after her. This was the reason Charlie had never fought her over my custody; he knew that at the time, like I said, she'd needed me more.

"I wouldn't be here if I weren't."

Charlie simply nodded back.

I had only packed two large duffel bags, both stuffed into my back seat. Most of my clothing had remained in Phoenix, being far too permeable for Forks' eternal rainy season. Summers in my youth spent hiking and backpacking around Washington with Charlie had also made me a light packer. I wrestled them free from my car, and when Charlie held a hand out, I handed him the lighter one.

"Do you remember Bonnie Black down at La Push?" Charlie asked as we turned and started walking toward his house. La Push is the small Indian reservation near the coast.

"Vaguely – she used to come hiking with us years ago right?"

"Yeah, her and her husband spent a couple summers running around with us a few years ago. She was pretty interested when I told her you were staying here till you finished school. She's… in a wheelchair now."

I didn't know how to respond to that one, and I wasn't sure I felt like asking why, so I just let Charlie keep talking.

"She got a new truck she can drive, and she offered me her old one for you while you were here. Seemed kind of put out when I told her you were bringing your own car. Think she didn't mind as much when I told her you liked working on it back in Phoenix and wouldn't have it any other way no matter what me or your mom said."

I hadn't been expecting that. But I couldn't honestly picture myself driving a truck anyway. "What kind of truck was it?" I asked just to keep the conversation going.

"It was pretty old anyway, I think it was made in the early fifties or sixties."

The only good thing about cars from that era was that they were usually made out of a solid hunk of metal.

"Yeah, sorry dad but I think I'd take my car over anything that requires a hitch post. It'd probably have the same gas mileage as a tank too." I said, reaching Charlie's front door.

"True enough," Charlie said cracking a grin. He fished in his pocket for a moment with his free hand, then handed me a bronze colored key.

"That one's yours by the way, do the honors."

"Thanks," I said, putting it in the lock.

Charlie gave me the same second story room I'd seen every year throughout my childhood. The window faced west, it had an unvarnished wood floor, light blue walls, and a peaked ceiling. It definitely felt familiar. The only changes that had ever been made to this room were swapping the crib out for a bed, and adding a desk as I'd grown. One year I'd also torn down the blue and white checker curtains around the window claiming I hated curtains. Still did. The white rocking chair from my baby days was still in the corner though.

There was a bathroom across the hall from my room, in addition to the main one downstairs. This was something I had been looking forward to immensely. Charlie's bedroom was on the main floor of the house, which meant I'd more or less have this bathroom all to myself. Back home I'd had to share the single tiny bathroom in her little house with her and Phil, which was a nightmare in the mornings. She also had ten times the stuff to put in it I did, and had resisted every attempt I'd ever made to organize it.

One of the best things about Charlie is that he never hovers. After we'd dropped my duffel bags on the bed in my room, he left me alone to unpack and get settled. It was nice to be able to actually be alone and have the entire floor of the house to myself. Charlie rarely came up here from what I remembered and without mom and Phil on the other side of the wall, the house felt _really_ quiet.

After three days of driving around to get here, it was honestly a relief to just sit on my bed and stare out the window, letting my thoughts drift to tomorrow.

Forks High School had just three hundred and fifty-eight – counting me – students. My old school in Phoenix had over seven hundred people in its junior class alone. All the kids here had grown up together. Small towns were very tight knit, and I was going to be _that new guy_ whether I wanted to be or not. Maybe if I had been one of the cool kids, I could make that work for me, but I honestly didn't care for it. Popularity, knowing everyone around me – it simply wasn't something I had ever focused on in my life. As a consequence, I'd only had a few, although very close friends back in Phoenix. I was certainly no class president, I hated sports, and I was a bit too quiet to be part of the popular crowd. I never had time for a lot of hobbies either, what with balancing my mom's checkbook, shopping for groceries, working my butt off out of school, and keeping my car from rusting out.

I guess I didn't relate well to people my age because of all that. Being a kid with the responsibilities of an adult did weird things to you. But I'd done pretty well all things considered, and it was my assumption that these last two years would be a great time to finally get away from all of it and focus on _me_ and _my_ future.

I slept pretty well that night, especially after I'd caved and dug out my laptop to fire off a very short email to my mom telling her I'd gotten to Charlie's safely. I'd considered calling her, but my phone was on its charger and it was late enough I couldn't be sure if she'd still be awake.

I'd always liked white noise while trying to get to sleep, so the constant _whooshing_ sound of the rain was rather tranquilizing, and around midnight I drifted off.

 **A/N:**

 **Thank you for your kind words guys, it's appreciated.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:**

 **Time to set up the Cullens! I'm not sure how to do this without being very similar to original Life & Death though, so I'll be using a portion of its material, but I really, really want this story to go its own way. There's just things I have to get out the door and establish first. As always, I own nothing, I'm playing in the sandbox of the gracious Stephanie Meyer and her publishers. Don't sue me. ****J**

Chapter 2

Thick fog was all I could see out my window in the morning, and I marvelled at how it reminded me of the hazy heat in Phoenix in the middle of summer. You could almost never really see the sky here, between the fog and the constant cloud cover.

Breakfast with Charlie was relatively quiet – we talked about the classes he'd managed to secure me spots in, and it turned out my schedule was going to be nearly identical to the one back home. Charlie wished me good luck for my first day, and then he left first, off to the police station that had been his wife and family since my mom and I had left.

After I'd done the dishes, I sat at the old square oak table in one of the three, matching – which was a new change since I'd been here last – chairs, and stared around the familiar kitchen, with its paneled walls, and white linoleum floor. The only change other than the chairs I noticed was the cabinets. They weren't the bright canary yellow they'd been the last time I'd seen them, but rather white, like the floor. My mom had painted them eighteen years ago, trying to bring some sunshine into the house. I supposed Charlie'd finally started doing a few things the way he wanted. He'd told me several times that my mom had never asked him about them before she'd started.

Over the small, dusty fireplace in the adjoining family room was a row of pictures. First, a photo of my mom, me, and Charlie at the hospital after I was born, taken by a helpful nurse, followed up by a photo of Charlie and little me in the woods somewhere with all our hiking gear on, then a procession of my school pictures except for last year's. It made me chuckle, as I hated school pictures, and my rebellious sixteen year old self had decided that I needn't be there for picture day that year. It was one of the larger arguments I'd ever had with my mom. What had surprised me was that she'd even called Charlie to talk condescendingly over the phone to me until I had agreed they could have their pictures next year and until I graduated. As far back as I could remember the first photo on the left had always been one of Charlie and my mom in Las Vegas as newlyweds, but looking around the room it was nowhere to be seen. I guessed Charlie really had started at least _trying_ to get over losing my mom.

I didn't want to be _too_ early to school, but I didn't feel like sitting alone in the house anymore, so I headed outside into the rain, not bothering to take a jacket.

Thankfully it was still only drizzling as I shut and locked the front door, but looking up, the sky was dark, which meant that at some point today it'd likely start raining far heavier knowing Forks, which was something I couldn't say I was really looking forward to.

Inside the Mustang, it was nice and dry. I smiled to myself that the door seals I'd replaced back in Phoenix last week in preparation for this trip had done the job. The old stock ones had been frayed, and simply didn't look like they would have been up to the challenge that was Forks' weather.

The subdued roar of the Mustang's V6 was a noise I had become familiar with over the last two years, and especially over the last three days. I'd replaced its exhaust over a year and a half ago; not because I didn't like the sound it had made when I first got it, but simply because it muddied up every other sound in the cabin while the engine was on – especially my music. In the heat of running both my life and that of my mom's, the hours I got to spend in my car getting from A to B had been my only real time to relax, so I had not been willing to compromise.

Taking a last look at Charlie's house, then at me mirrors, I threw the car into reverse and pulled out onto the road.

Finding the school wasn't difficult, but I'd never been there before and I wasn't taking any chances; before I left I'd punched the school's address into my phone, so I knew where I was supposed to be going, but I wasn't expecting it to look the way it did when I pulled up. It was just off the highway, as with most things in Forks, but it wasn't really obvious that it was a school at all. It looked more like a collection of matching houses, built with maroon colored bricks, and I was amazed by how many trees and shrubs there were scattered across the property. Back in Phoenix it had felt very much like an institution – very sterile. Lacking the chain link fences, the metal detectors, and the rent-a-cops, this place had a very _open_ feeling.

I pulled into the square parking lot – almost half full already, and tried to pick out a spot. I passed an old Mercury, a rusting out Grand Caravan, and a blue Tercel, then beside that was a very pristine looking BMW F30. It must have belonged to one of the higher ups in the staff, I thought as I passed by it, and in any case I decided to circle around to the other side of the lot. New looking beamer meant people standing around it after school, which meant attention, which meant hard to back out and go home. In the end I settled on a spot near a sign that said _Front Office_ , though I made doubly sure I wasn't in a restricted spot.

Inside, it was brightly lit, and cooler than I was used to. The office just to the right of the door I'd come in was small, with a little waiting area with comfy looking padded chairs, green, industrial looking carpet, a giant cork board with brightly colored papers all over it, and one of those large mechanical clocks that doesn't tick. On opposite ends of the reception counter that cut the room in half stood small potted plants – as if the trees hugging the entire property weren't enough green already. Behind the reception counter sat a rotund balding man with glasses who looked up as I walked in.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely.

I decided to test how much I was already expected.

"I'm Beau Swan,' I said simply.

The quick recognition in his eyes confirmed what I thought – most of the school was probably already gossiping about _the new kid_ 's arrival. The chief's son, the one with the flighty mother, finally home at last.

"Ah, of course," he said. He dug through a neatly piled stack of papers on the desk till he found the ones he was looking for.

"I have your schedule right here, Beaufort, and a map of the school," he said, pushing several papers across the counter to me.

"Thanks, and it's just Beau, if it's all the same to you." I responded.

"Oh, sure, Beau," Came his reply. He brought out a vibrant pink highlighter and reached across the counter, marking each of my classes on the map, and gave me a slip I was to bring to each teacher to sign and bring back at the end of the day. As I turned to head out the door back into the rest of the school he wished me luck the same way Charlie had, and sat back down.

I looked at the map while I stood outside the office door, memorizing the route to me first class so I wouldn't be seen walking down the halls with it in my face, made sure the single binder and two pens I always brought to classes were still in my right hand, and stepped out into the flow of teenagers going down the hall.

Building three was simple enough to find after taking the back door out of the main part of the school. A large "3" was tacked onto its door, which I followed two people in yellow coats through.

The classroom was small. The people in front of me stopped to hang their coats on hooks just inside the door. As I didn't bother with my jacket this morning, I simply walked over to the teacher to hand her my slip. She was a narrow woman with mousey hair and a nametag – Ms. Mason – pinned to her shirt. She gawked openly at me when she saw my name, and I felt the temptation to roll my eyes. She sent me to an empty desk in the back of the class without introducing me, and I sat down, leaning back into the chair and putting my hands into my pockets.

It was hard for people to stare at me in the back, but some still managed it. I had to stop myself laughing every time I caught one of them craning their necks around to take a look. I couldn't help it – the first time one of them did it, it reminded my vividly of that one scene in Toy Story where Woody spins his head around a hundred and eighty degrees to scare the kid holding him.

The reading list the teacher had given me after signing my slip was pretty basic. I'd already read Shakespeare and Chaucer and most of the other ones listed. While boring, it was comforting knowing I could probably fall asleep in this particular classroom several days in a row and miss nothing.

When the bell rang, a pale, skinny girl with pretty bad acne and oily black hair leaned across the space between our desks to talk to me.

"You're Beaufort Swan, aren't you?" I pegged her as the harmless chess club, band member type.

"Just Beau," I corrected her, several people craning their necks again, and I tried to fight a smile, but couldn't quite hack it.

"Where's your next class?" She asked, helpfully.

"Government, Jefferson, I think, building six." Even without the map in my hand I had a pretty decent memory.

"I'm headed to building four, if you need someone to show you the way…" Yup, certainly helpful. "I'm Erica, by the way," she added.

"Sure, thanks."

I waited for her to get her jacket, then headed back out into the drizzle. "So, this is different than Phoenix, huh?" she asked.

"Yeah, it's all wet… funny that," I attempted at humor.

It fell flat on her. "It doesn't rain much there, does it?"

"If you do a particular kind of dance in a certain spot at a specific time," I attempted again.

"Wow, what must that be like?" She wondered seriously.

"Dry," I told her… dryly. I resolved to stop using humor with this one.

"But you don't have much of a tan."

"I burn easy," I said flatly.

She studied my face uneasily, and I stifled the urge to smile widely just to see if that would get a reaction out of her.

We walked back around the cafeteria to the buildings by the gym. Erica followed me almost to the door.

"Well, good luck," she said. People here kept wishing me that, like something bad was going to happen that I'd need it to get through. I fought the urge to roll my eyes again.

"Maybe we'll have some other classes together," she said hopefully. I smiled a very genuine-looking smile at her, and went inside.

The rest of my morning passed relatively the same way. My Trigonometry teacher, Ms. Varner, who I would have dislike anyway simply because she taught _math_ , was the only one who made me stand in front of the class and introduce myself.

"Hi, I'm _Beau_ Swan", I said to a small sea of thirty-odd faces, putting emphasis on my first name hoping it'd stick. I looked at Ms. Varner, hoping she'd let me slide with just that, but she only gestured towards the class again, and I fought once more not to roll my eyes.

"I came from Phoenix, and I'm here because… I… liked going hiking with my dad here when I was a kid." Ms. Varner finally nodded at me and I took my seat in one of the back corners.

After two classes, I started to recognize some of the faces that kept popping up. Both classes there was someone braver than the rest who would introduce themselves and start asking questions. I was diplomatic for the most part, if a bit generic with my answers. At the very least I was able to stick the map in the back of my binder and didn't think I'd have to use it again.

In every class, the teacher, and some of the other students, would start out calling me Beaufort, and in all honesty by about the tenth time I was getting sick of bothering. I'd hated my first name for nigh on ten years now, given to me by my mother because she felt obligated after her father up and died a couple months before my birth. I'd ground _Beau_ into the hearts and minds of everyone back in Phoenix so hard they didn't even remember it wasn't just a nickname any more, and I was beginning to realize that I'd have to start all over again in Forks.

One guy sat next to me in both classes, and he walked with me to the cafeteria for lunch. He was short, but his hair right out of _Napoleon Dynamite_ made up for a good three and a half inches between our heights. I couldn't remember his name, so I just smiled at him and nodded whenever he looked at me to make sure I was still listening to him, and I didn't even try to keep up.

We sat at the end of a full table with several of his friends. He'd introduced me to each, but I forgot their names as soon as I heard them. They seemed to think it cool that he'd made friends with the new kid. Erica, the band-typey girl from English waved to me from across the room at one point, and half the table laughed. It took me several moments to realize I was the target of their laughter.

It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to talk to the end of the lunch period with a group of someone else's friends, that I first saw them.

They were seated in the opposite corner of the cafeteria from me, and there were five of them, none of them talking. Though they each had a tray of food sitting in front of them, they weren't eating. There were three girls, one _much_ taller than I was, with red hair strung into a ponytail. The second had very dark blonde hair down to her shoulders, and was shorter than the first, though still taller than any of the guys sitting with me. The last girl was quite small, with dark metallic brown hair down to the middle of her back. She looked younger than the other two, though that could have been influenced solely by her height.

The two guys were opposites. The taller one, who looked about as tall as me, had gold hair almost as long as the girls'. The shorter guy was just a couple inches above the smallest of the girls, with flat black hair buzzed extremely short. They were all exactly the same in two ways – first, each one was chalky pale, even paler than I was. Second, they all had very dark eyes, and shadows under them that made them look like they had all been up very late studying. Those dark rings under their eyes were the _only_ imperfections I could see in any of them from where I sat, and it was why I found it hard to look away.

They all looked ridiculously perfect. Photoshop had nothing on these particular people. It was difficult to believe they were real. I decided, however, that the most beautiful of all of them was the smallest girl with the long metallic hair. This girl was incredible to me – every curve on her elfin face was perfected. She was the embodiment of everything I found attractive in women, and it was so much that it made the space between my eyes hurt with the effort of looking. They all looked bored – each looking off in a different direction.

As I watched them, the short guy with the buzz cut rose with his tray of untouched food, and walked away with a quick, graceful stride. I watched him dump his tray and glide out through the back door of the cafeteria, and then my eyes switched back to the remaining four, who still hadn't moved.

"Who are they?" I asked the guy from my second class, whose name I was now sorry I'd forgotten.

He didn't look up from his phone to see who I meant – he could probably guess who I meant by my tone, but in the instant after I asked, she suddenly looked up at us. For a fraction of a second the perfect girl looked at the guy beside me, and then her dark eyes settled on mine – large eyes surrounded by long, thick lashes.

I'd intended to hold her gaze, but she looked away very quickly, so I did too, not wanting to seem awkward to her. My neighbor laughed lowly once, still not looking up as he muttered his answer.

"Those are the Cullens and the Hales. Edith and Eleanor Cullen, Jessamine and Royal Hale. Archie was the one who left a moment ago. They live with Dr. Cullen and her husband.

I looked back up at the perfect girl again, who was now demolishing a perfectly innocent bagel with her small, pale fingers. Their names sounded old – just like mine, I thought with a twitch of humor.

"They're all… sort of good looking."

"Yup," my neighbor agreed, finally looking up from his phone to me with another low laugh. "They're all _together_ , though… Royal, Eleanor, Archie and Jess. They're all _together_ ," he said again waggling his eyebrows and twisting his two fingers together to wave in front of his face, grinning.

I couldn't help myself. "What about… Edith, was her name?" I tried to make it sound casual.

He caught me immediately. "She's hot, sure, but don't bother. She doesn't go out with anyone. Apparently none of the guys in this tiny school are good enough for her. It's not gonna be my fault if you crash and burn." I silently wondered how many times he'd tried.

"How do they all live together?" I asked, truly interested.

"I think they're some kind of foster kids."

"They look a might old for that…" I didn't really buy it.

"Yeah, now they are. Royal and Jessamine are both eighteen, but they've been with Mr. Cullen as long as I can remember, I think he's their uncle or something. It's hard to follow honestly, I mean Dr. Cullen is really young for a doctor, so I really have no idea how the whole family is put together."

"Kind of interesting they'd choose to take care of so many kids if they're that young themselves," I was still having a hard time trying to get it straight in my own head.

"I suppose so," said my neighbor, and it sounded like he was nearing the point where he would get bored of this conversation. Through the entire conversation I couldn't stop looking at them – looking at her, and she continued to look at nothing in particular and pick apart her helpless bagel.

"Have they always lived here?" I asked, still over-eager for information.

"Nah, they just moved down two years ago. Somewhere way up north I think."

As I continued to look at them, _she_ looked up and met my gaze again, this time with a look of curiosity. This time I held her eyes for several seconds, and her expression slowly changed to one that looked almost frustrated. After a few more seconds she dropped her eyes again, and a couple minutes later they all left their table together. All of them had the same graceful stride as the first – Archie – had.

I sat at the table with Jeremy – one of his friends had unwittingly asked him something, and I filed his name away for later – and his friends until the bell. One of Jeremy's friends, who had politely reminded me that his name was Allen – I was seriously bad with names – told me he had Biology with me this next period, and we walked to class together in relative silence. He seemed like he was shy, and I was still busy mulling over the cafeteria conversation.

When we entered the classroom, Allen went to sit at one of those long, black-topped lab tables every science classroom in every high school always has – and I noticed he already had a neighbor. I paused to look around the room only to see every single seat was taken, all but one. Next to the center aisle, I recognized Edith Cullen by her unique curtain of dark metallic hair alone, sitting next to the single open seat, with the side of her head in her palm and her elbow on the table, absentmindedly writing in one of her books. _Hmm_ , I thought, _I guess this is my chance to talk actually talk to her instead of just staring awkwardly._

I watched her out of the corner of my eye as I walked towards the teacher's desk at the front of the classroom to get my "new kid" slip signed, and just as I passed by her table, she suddenly went stock still. It seemed as though every muscle and tendon in her body tensed at once, and her face was suddenly pointed right at me, the change so fast I hadn't seenit happen even though I'd been watching her the entire time. She was looking straight at me with extremely wide black eyes and an expression that was a mix between cold fear and fury.

Instinctively, I looked away and kept walking, placing my new kid slip under Mrs. Banner's nose as soon as I got to her desk. She signed it, then plopped a textbook onto the corner of her desk closest to me and slapped my slip down on top of it. With no nonsense about my name or introductions she simply said "take a seat", and went back to her other papers. I could tell we were going to get along famously.

Of course, the only seat I could take without being rude was the one in the middle of the room. I took a short glance at _her_ as I went to go take my seat, and noted no change in expression. Her piercing gaze was following me every inch of the way to my seat. I felt confused and a bit awkward – I wondered exactly what I'd done or reminded her of to incite the glare she was still giving me even though I had looked away to sit down.

As I moved to sit I saw her posture change carefully. Each inch closer I got to sitting next to her, she moved another inch to the opposite side. Suddenly she found the edge of her seat and had to grab the table to keep herself balanced, her hand shooting out to grip the black surface so fast it was a blur. Nobody I had ever known back home had moved quite as quickly as this strange girl did.

Very slowly, she turned back to face her part of our table, and deliberately turned her face to look back down at the book she had been writing in, but her hand was still on the black top of the table, knuckles white and straining against the wood. Staring at her book, her nose slowly crinkled up at the bridge, as if she smelled something disgusting, but she didn't even look as if she was breathing.

Covertly I tilted my head to my chest and breathed in – I smelled like me… a mix of the body wash and shampoo I'd used this morning, and the fabric softener in the laundry room back home I'd washed all my clothes with before I'd left for Forks. It might have been a mix of scents, but at least they were all sedate and pleasant – nothing to earn the crazy look she'd been giving me moments ago. I frowned, moved to the right side of my chair for her, and tried to pay attention to the lesson.

The unit the class was on was cellular anatomy, a unit I'd just finished up with my old class before I left. I rolled my eyes at the double lessons I'd be getting in this class for the next few weeks at least and silently wondered if I could reuse my homework from my old class here – that was harmless, right?

I was curious enough to shoot the occasional glance at _her_ every once in a while, and throughout the entire class she never relaxed her stiff posture, her small frame still at the very edge of her chair, as far from me as she could get. Finally, after several minutes, she moved her hand off the black table and to her thigh, clenched tightly into a fist. On the table where her hand had been were four small indents in the wood. I wondered at the chances of those indents being there before her hand was – these tables were pretty strong judging from the ones back home, and she was so small…

She had the sleeves of her white Henley pushed up to her elbows, and as I looked at her one arm still on the table, and the one balled up on her thigh under it, I didn't see any imperfections in her skin at all. No freckles or scars or anything.

The class seemed to drag on and on as Mrs. Banner talked, occasionally pointing at the blackboard. Was it because it was finally the end of the day, or was it because I was waiting for _her_ to relax her posture? But she never did - I had yet to catch her inhaling or exhaling at all. What was wrong with her? Was this how she usually reacted to people?

Mrs. Banner passed some quizzes back at one point and I was handed one to pass to the girl. I glanced at her mark curiously – one hundred percent, of course. I'd also been spelling her name wrong in my head – Edythe instead of Edith. It fit her face better, but I'd never seen it spelled like that.

As I slid the paper across the table I glanced at her. Her eyes were still wide, but the fear and hate I'd seen in them before was less present. There were other emotions in their place in her gaze, but I couldn't pin them down to words or feelings in my mind. It was a very strange expression, and out of my own confusion, I looked away from her and back to the front of the class.

Mrs. Banner decided the last five minutes of class could be ours, and went back to her own papers once again. Everyone around me started talking at once, and I felt suddenly out of place – what, with the world's strangest and most silent girl sitting next to me and no real friends to chat with. I adopted a bored expression, put the side of my head in my palm facing away from Edythe, and resolved to flipping through my textbook aimlessly.

" _Hey._ "

Her voice came from close behind me; low, light, and silky smooth. I whipped my head around to see Edythe inches from me, on the other extreme edge of her seat. I turned to face her fully, my eyebrows up, lost for words after the abrupt change in her behavior.

She was looking up at me with a small smile, and as I met her eyes her smile widened, showing her dimples. She was obviously waiting for me to say something back, and on instinct before speaking I inhaled, then her scent caught in my nostrils and I breathed deeper. She smelled _wonderful_ – Flowery, earthy and very, very feminine, but nothing about it smelled fake, or like a product concocted in a lab. "Hey," – I managed to choke out.

She indicated with her head towards the back door of the classroom, her eyes never leaving mine.

"Would you… Come with me outside the door? I'd like to… explain." Her smile went wider still.

 _Perhaps she's just shy?_ I thought. Perhaps she'd simply found her voice and figured out how odd she was being? Either way, I was curious, and Mrs. Banner was turned away, engrossed in her papers. Everyone else was talking amongst themselves in groups and nobody was really facing us.

"Why can't we talk here?" I asked, logically.

She shrugged slightly in response, looking from one of my eyes to the other and then back again. Suddenly she moved to stand up with deliberate slowness. _What the hell, can't hurt to talk to the girl, can it? If she wants it to be alone, fine._ I thought to myself and stood with her. I took an exploratory look around and realized that nobody was looking our way. Everyone was still hovering over other people's desks or talking loudly to their neighbors. Two or three had even disappeared completely, making me think ditching the last five minutes of Mrs. Banner's class was a regular occurrance. I looked back at Edythe and she again gestured with her head to the door, and then lithely glided to it and out, turning immediately down the hall. I hastened to follow her.

The moment I crossed the threshold of the door, I was against the wall next to it with my back, and I couldn't remember willing myself into that position. Suddenly Edythe was in front of me, and _very_ close, staring straight ahead into my chest, her face expressionless.

"Edythe?" I asked her.

Her hands both came up to my shirt, and balled in the fabric, the skin under my shirt twitching slightly where she made contact. My own hands reflexively came up to hold her arms around her bare elbows. Finally, she looked up and met my eyes.

"Are you okay?" I tried again.

Slowly, she tilted her head to the side, still looking from one of my eyes to the other again, back and forth.

Then her face was moving towards mine, raising herself on her tip toes. Her perfect lips parted slightly and I heard her inhale as she quickened her movement towards my face.

When she was almost at my lips with hers, one of her hands shot up, the back of it tracing the side of my jaw. Then her hand was pushing against my jaw with force, turning my head. No girl had ever kissed my neck before, or just me in general… But i _f that's how she wants it… This can't go for long, the bell's going to ring, and then she's going to have some real explaining to do._ I thought as she closed the final few inches between us.

I could feel her cool breath on my neck as she exhaled deeply; my hands automatically went to her waist, finding a small band of skin between her clothing. Her skin was cold, but so very soft, and her scent was radiating around me. Combined with her proximity it was all making me a bit light headed. I closed my eyes and focused on my other senses.

"Edythe!"

She froze instantly.

The sound came from down the hall, but was incredibly loud. My eyes shot open and I twisted to look for the source. About thirty feet down the hallway stood the second smallest Cullen, Archie. He was glaring at Edythe with wide, fearful eyes. Edythe turned her head to meet him, and then very quickly returned to my direction, confusion etched on her perfect face.

She looked up at me, then to her hands on my shirt and jaw, recoiled, and put both her hands up in front of her as she backed away inch by inch.

"I didn't see until now…" Archie said, his eyes pleading silently at Edythe.

She took one last look in my direction, and then as I was looking right at her, she _disappeared_. I scrunched up my face, and looked down the hall. Not finding her, I looked back where Archie was on the opposite side.

"Where did…" I never got the full sentence out. Archie was just as gone as Edythe was.

I scrunched up my face in a confused sort of daze, and then the bell a few feet above my head began blaring loudly, signalling the end of last period. I was still trying to process when the hall began filling with students. Silently, I marched back into the classroom to retrieve my books.

When I got to the table – _our table_ , my own things were still there, just as I'd left them, but Edythe's books were gone, her side of the desk barren, and the four dents in the desk I was sure she had made were now one larger, smoother dent.

 **A/N:**

 **Okay so I just wanna say that to be honest it's REALLY difficult to write things relatively similar in the beginning of this without Xeroxing SM's own work in its entirety. I know I'm not the first to run into this problem and I take solace in the fact that from here I only need to borrow a few lines here and there from various scenes throughout the book(s).**

 **I can finally let my Beau and my Edythe out in the open air once we get them talking. I'm not sure yet if I want to do that using the van scene the way SM does or take it somewhere completely different. Different is probably better I suppose. We'll see.**

 **I promise you we're on a whole new ride :)** **Thanks for the positive comments. Constructive criticism, corrections, etc. are all welcomed. Please help me make me own writing better.**


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